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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28581627">In the Sanctum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LurkerForAlways/pseuds/LurkerForAlways'>LurkerForAlways</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Legend of Zelda &amp; Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Hateno Village, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Porn With Plot, Post-Calamity, Smut and Angst, Vaginal Sex, You've been warned, and some cliches, botw, lots of feels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:28:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,636</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28581627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LurkerForAlways/pseuds/LurkerForAlways</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He felt the apology coming and parried it deftly, knight that he was. “What’s mine is yours, Princess.”</p><p>A sly smile. “Do not tempt me, Hero.” </p><p>“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” </p><p>--<br/>Link and Zelda in Hateno a few weeks after the fall of the Calamity. Some angsty smut, which is the best kind.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In the Sanctum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Feeling cute, might delete later ✌️</p><p>Or, you know, I wrote a thing and I liked it so I decided to post it, even though I am HIGHLY skeptical of its merits as a work of fiction. But you know what, 2021 is the year of leaning into the things that scare me. And for some reason anonymously pushing out words about fictional characters is a fear of mine. Look, I never said it made sense.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In their fourth week in Hateno, Link awoke and the princess had gone. Not far, he soon realized, clutching at his chest as he willed his heartbeat to slow. He could see her from the loft window, though only the broad shapes of her were distinguishable in the dim moonlight. She lay beneath the tree at the pond nearby, huddled in his own blankets. He blinked to make sure she wasn’t a mere apparition and then raced down the stairs and out the door, desperate to have her in his sights again.</p><p>She heard his approach and turned to face him, eyes glittering. Her features were marred only by the bruising blues and purples that shadowed her eyes, the harsh branding of sleep deprivation. Even so, the picture she made—one hand emerging from the blankets to beckon Link closer, the other unfolding beneath her as she sat up—seemed almost divine in its beauty. He took her hand, slender and warm, before dropping down next to her. She shivered slightly as she unwound her blanket cocoon enough to allow Link entrance. Her skin was cool where Link’s seemed to burn. He wiggled his toes out from below the hem of the blanket to release some of his ambient heat. Zelda laughed at the sight of his toes and brought her own frigid ones to Link’s calves, teasing along his skin. He gasped and shivered, only causing Zelda to laugh harder, before Link swiveled her so that her legs were draped over his own, her back against the great tree trunk, her feet on his lap. He brought a hand to each foot, warming each, his palms to her soles.</p><p>She sighed, quiet but discernable in the early morning silence. Her eyes fluttered shut, and before long Link, having decided her feet were sufficiently warmed, began to knead the knots out of her right foot and then her left. When done, she sighed again. He would happily chase that sound for the rest of his life.</p><p>The sun was threatening its appearance, not yet over the horizon but brightening the sky a deep purple. Zelda’s voice broke the silence, her lilting tones summoning forth the rising sun. “I stole your blankets.”</p><p>He felt the apology coming and parried it deftly, knight that he was. “What’s mine is yours, Princess.”</p><p>A sly smile. “Do not tempt me, Hero.”</p><p>“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” She went to swat at his shoulder, but he caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm.</p><p>She left her hand against his mouth for a moment before bringing it to his cheek. She leaned in close, looking hard at him, as if trying to decipher some sort of scientific diagram. Perhaps she found what she was looking for, because she abruptly leaned back against the tree again, her fingertips skimming against his jaw before he was out of range.</p><p>“I tried to find other blankets, but it was dark and I didn’t want to wake you.” A squeeze to her foot—he would have preferred to be roused, it said. She shook her head. “I didn’t want to wake you,” she repeated, leaving no room for dissention, “and so often you wake up with the blankets thrown off in the night. But I take it their absence woke you?”</p><p>“<em>Your</em> absence woke me.”</p><p>The way she blushed was so pretty. After a few wordless moments, she managed some indecipherable but happy noise. She tried to cover her eyes with her hand, but he squeezed her foot again. She threw him a grin that was equal parts sheepish and adoring. <em>Do you know what you do to me</em>, it seemed to say. <em>Not a fraction of what you do to me</em>, Link thought to himself.</p><p>Another few moments of silence, the sun rising properly now, bathing the village in gold. She looked so peaceful, eyes shut against the brilliance of the morning light. He hated to spoil the serenity, but he wanted her to know. “You scared me.”</p><p>Her eyes flashed open, verdant, mossy, penetrating green. “I did?”</p><p>“I thought you had gone. Or disappeared. I thought you may have been a dream.”</p><p>The look she gave him then, he’d remember it for the rest of his life. It would be his undoing and his salvation. He would be its prisoner and worship its grace. His princess. She was his princess.</p><p>Her voice was a whisper, hardly louder than the breeze. “Will you take me back inside, Hero?” He had her over his shoulder and halfway to the door before she even knew what was happening.</p><p>--</p><p>The sun streaked into the loft only a few hours later. Zelda glowed in the light like a goddess, like <em>the</em> goddess. With her head on his chest, he felt the gentle tickle of her eyes fluttering open. He kissed at her hairline and traced the ridges of her spine. And just like that, he had another contented sigh of hers to savor.</p><p>“I had been dreaming of the Sanctum,” she said, the vibrations of her words sinking into Link’s skin. “This morning, I mean.” She had not spoken about the Sanctum before, had evaded all of Link’s attempts to open that conversation. Link waited, holding his breath and wondering at what she might say next.</p><p>But she pivoted immediately, leaving mention of the Sanctum behind. “Falling asleep next to you is an unspeakable joy. One I never thought I’d earn or enjoy with any regularity.” The veering direction of the conversation shocked him, but it took only a moment for the words to seep under his skin and warm him tip to toes. Where her face lay against his sternum, Link felt the turn of her lips, the gentle contours of a smile. He tried to look at her, but her face was angled toward their feet. He brought a hand to her cheek to tip her face up toward his, but in an instant her hand was on his, gentle but insistent. <em>Not yet.</em></p><p>“You are wonderful and so warm. And when your body covers mine…” She floated her hand up the column of his neck, releasing his own and trusting Link to wait as she’d requested. She did not need sight to find the angle of his jaw, the  thrilling prickle of his stubble. He leaned into her touch and he felt her smile shift towards one of mirth, satisfaction. “Even when you have me wrapped up so tight I could never get free, I want to be closer still, somehow.” He fingertips danced across his lips. “The things you do to me, Hero.</p><p>“And in the dark, when it’s just the two of us and the world fades and you’re mine, all mine…” He was clutching her now, breathing heavy. This girl.</p><p>But then her eyes finally did tip up, and they were glassy, wet with tears. Link felt his stomach churn, as if hit from behind while on horseback, his velocity changing at an unexpected and dangerous rate. In a moment, he had them reversed, her back against the mattress, his body looming over hers. He brought his face down to hers, so close he could see each lash darkened by tears. They were flowing freely now, and he kissed at each, and some how she was sighing and crying and laughing and he could hardly keep up as the tears continued to fall.</p><p>“Talk to me, Zelda,” he breathed, his voice rasping against her. He realized too late that he had framed his words as an order, but she hadn’t seemed to notice. Her fingers were in his hair, and she used her purchase to pull him away for a moment, again gentle, again insistent.</p><p>“That first night with you, I fell asleep happier than I thought possible. But I made a mistake, Link, a grave error. I thought to myself at that very moment it is over and we have won. I tempted fate.” She shivered. “But fate always wins. Always.”</p><p>Her words were coming faster, more frantic, higher pitched. “I hadn’t dreamt of anything since you saved me, but that night, that first, wonderful night, Calamity came for me. I was back in the Sanctum, prisoner, but there was no beacon blinking hope at me from the Shrine of Resurrection. Just darkness, eternal and unending.” A swallowed sob, and then another rush of words. “I was being crushed and I wasn’t strong enough to hold him off, not in that moment or any moment that might follow. He did not need to go through me to conquer Hyrule because he had already done so.” A real sob this time, one that would not be disguised or evaded. “The whole country burned with malice, but the Sanctum was hotter still, stifling and stealing every breath. I thought I might die at the torture of it, if I weren’t sure he’d keep me by his side always, close enough to death to feel the glow of its salvation but never close enough to know true deliverance. I was to be crushed or burned or both for all time, and Calamity was laughing and laughing, creeping closer, suffocating me, devouring me. I would be his, forever and ever and ever, and the world would end but not him and me, never that.”</p><p>She cried in earnest, then, and Link laid his head in the crook of her neck and slipped his arms beneath her, holding her close, putting every surface of his being he could against her. She cried harder, wrapped her arms around him, as if she was trying to seep into his skin. “The same dream, every night, Link. It won’t stop coming. I don’t know what to do.”</p><p>Something in Link’s brain was urging him to listen harder, to recognize something that he was missing. He considered the content of her dreams, the endless dark, the stifling heat, the claustrophobia of that cursed Sanctum. And he thought about when the dreams started, how she had seemed perfectly fine that first week in the house when he had been sleeping on the floor. What was Zelda trying to tell him, and why was she doing it like this, hidden beneath a veil as if to soften an oncoming blow?</p><p>And then, clarity, followed immediately by pain, sickening and debilitating. An arrow to the heart, a knife to the gut. His warmth, his embraces, the very same that rocked her to sleep were those that brought forth her nightly horrors. He sagged against her then, beginning to realize just how much his affection was costing her.</p><p>But even as his grip upon her weakened, she held him closer, tighter. She spoke again, her voice steady but for an errant hiccup. “And yet, the idea of quitting this, of giving it up for even one night, one moment.” She clicked her tongue then, as if the idea were so ludicrous that it defied words. “I have trouble sleeping, but in exchange, I have you. And I would take a million nightmares for that. I would suffer however many it takes.”</p><p>Her words might have been a comfort if they weren’t so dismissive. Link had seen the nightmares, had watched the toll they took each evening, and he lived in ever-present fear of their horrors. Horrors, which, until now, she had kept to herself. They ravaged her nightly, prompting her to forego sleep entirely some nights, reading books into the early morning hours as a reprieve from what awaited her in her dreams. He often had to wake her for fear that her writhing would throw them both off the bed. Other nights her shrieks of terror would wake him before they would wake her, and he’d have to shake her awake to get her to stop. Most nights ended in tears, Link’s at having to watch such pain and Zelda at having to live it.</p><p>Link was shaking his head before the words had left her mouth. “No, you can’t keep doing this,” he said, desperate and pleading. “We’ll do something.”</p><p>She brought his face to hers, kissed him slowly, leisurely, attempted to smooth the crease between his brows with a swipe of her fingertips. “There’s nothing to do, Hero. All the foes are slain, all the princesses saved. Your job is done.”</p><p>“We’ll get you your own bed.”</p><p>“I don’t want my own bed.”</p><p>“I’ll sleep on the floor.”</p><p>“You will not.”</p><p>“Zelda, we can’t go on like this.” He pulled away from her then, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, head in his palms. “I thought your nightmares were unavoidable, but knowing they’re not? That I’m causing them?”</p><p>“We can, though.”</p><p>“No, we cannot.” The words came out more forcefully than he’d intended, and yet he couldn’t stop them. “I cannot. I cannot do that to you.”</p><p>“Link, don’t you get it: you make me happy. You are the very soul of my happiness. I lay awake at night wondering how any one person, let alone a pitiful princess such as myself, can be worthy of such a blessing.</p><p>“That you bring me pain—unintentionally, unwillingly—it is such a small, insignificant feeling given what you bring me. Do not—<em>Goddess, please do not</em>—take that away from me."</p><p>He studied her. She looked feral as her words veered toward desperation. She sat against the headboard, naked and vulnerable, completely at the mercy of a fear that seemed to eat her from the inside out. His heart was cracking open at the sight, but his inclination—to envelope her in his arms—was suddenly tainted. His was the touch of Calamity. “Zelda,” he said, voice low and crackling, “my job is to protect you.”</p><p>She hugged a sheet to her chest, a pitiful act of self-preservation. “If your job demands you to pull away from me, then forget your job! I release you from your vows.”</p><p>“You can’t just—.”</p><p>“I can! I can do anything. I will do anything. Do you want me to beg?”</p><p>Things were spiraling out of control. Link looked down at his feet, reminding himself that he was steady on the ground. But the world itself, it seemed, had tipped on its axis. He was not steady, the very opposite, in fact, pulled and buffeted by forces far out of reach. “Please, Zelda?” He tried to grasp something, anything, to right this failing ship. “Please, I need to think.”</p><p>“No! No, Link, I know you. You and your ridiculous code of honor, your knightly vows. You will convince yourself that your presence is of harm to me, you will pull away, even though neither of us want that!” She scrabbled at him, pressing her whole body against his back, arms wrapping around his shoulders. “I’m begging you, Link, please. Please just promise me you won’t pull away. Please.”</p><p>She kissed his shoulder and he shuddered, though she ignored it. She continued peppering them along the gentle arc of his shoulder until he was pliant and dazed, at her mercy. He thought then, as he often had, that he would always be at her mercy. And yet, suddenly the thrill of that truth was tempered by chilling fear.</p><p>“You think you know what’s best for me,” she whispered, her hand reaching around him, ghosting along his stomach and then lower still. He tried unsuccessfully to bite back a moan. “You make me so happy, Link.” Her fingers were gentle, tender, teasing and slow. He wanted to cry from the pleasure, from the despair. “Do I make you happy, Link?” He was going to laugh—like she didn’t know—but her fingers moved deftly <em>right there</em> and the laugh became a whimper.</p><p>Somehow, he found a pocket of lucidity amongst the onslaught of her touch. “This isn’t fair, Zelda,” he bit out through clenched teeth, his voice raw and rasping.</p><p>She nodded against his shoulder but didn’t slow her ministrations. “It’s not, of course. But I am desperate. Desperate for you, my love. Desperate for you to know what you do to me, to give it back in kind, to beg for your affections as if I could not live without them.” She was picking up the pace and it was taking all his will power not to thrust into her hand. “Because the truth is, dearest, I cannot. I am yours.”</p><p>He couldn’t listen to her anymore, not for another second. He leapt up and turned to pounce on her, caging her between his arms. She gasped, perhaps in surprise, perhaps in pleasure. He swallowed the sound in a searing kiss. In a moment, he was thrusting into her, rough and unyielding. She was moaning, legs wrapped around him to pull him closer. She watched, eyes lidded with lust, as he brought one hand to his mouth and sucked two fingers before pressing them, glistening and wet, right where their bodies met. She moaned, her own fingers digging bright halfmoons into his back. He felt the familiar fluttering around his length, knew she was close, and pumped harder, deeper, all the while his fingers moving between them.</p><p>She came then, screaming his name, whimpering against him. And yet, he did not stop, did not pause or even slow down. She raised her eyebrows, confused and unsure, about to unwrap herself, but his look said he knew exactly what he was doing and brokered no disagreement. Soon enough she was rocking against him, her sensitivity triggering new levels of pleasure. He was breathing deeper now, his thrusts slower but more intense. The pleasure was overwhelming her, fogging her mind.</p><p>And then, Link’s voice emerged sharply from the haze. “Does this remind you of Calamity? Will you fall asleep to the memory of this and feel his body against yours as mine is right now?”</p><p>“Link, I--.”</p><p>“Because I can’t have that, Princess.” His eyes were full, his voice laced with tears, so at odds with the unrelenting pace of his body. “If you are mine, I am yours, have been since the very moment we met. I follow your orders and abide my vows and will do as you ask in all things. Do with me as you will, direct me as you see fit.” He brought the hand that had been between them to his mouth and licked his fingers clean, his gaze never leaving hers. He brought them back down again, and then, somehow, was moving them more insistently, more enticingly. Her hips rose up on their own accord. “But, Princess, know this: that I may be currently reminding you of Calamity, that our interactions may elicit nightmares that keep us both awake for days on end. It is a pain I will never get used to, and one that will eat away at me until my last breath.”</p><p>She was close then, very close. So was he, she could feel. But this was wrong. She brought her hands to his chest. “Please stop,” she whispered, even as a part of her brain cursed the very words out of her mouth. She kissed the place where his shoulder met his neck, carefully, slowly. He came to a stop but didn’t pull out of her, breathing heavy under her lips. “You must know,” she said softly, “you must know, before another second passes, that while my unconscious mind might associate you with Calamity in the throes of sleep, the me that is here and now, she is your Zelda. And not even for an instant does the thought flicker across her mind that you and the Calamity feel the same.”</p><p>“Link,” she said, starting up their rhythm again. In the tones of her voice, his name was a prayer, a divine gift. He dropped his head to her shoulder. “Above all, Link, I associate you with pleasure.” A particularly delicious roll of her hips. “With love, with devotion, with kindness.” He took over then, hardly aware of his own actions given the spell she was casting. He brought the pace back up, rutting against her helplessly. Even then, her words continued. “I do not believe the Calamity knows those things. But you do, more than anyone I’ve ever met. Goddess, Link, every moment with you makes me think I can die tonight and feel perfectly, completely at bliss.”</p><p>His head had not lifted from her shoulder, so she felt the tears dripping onto her skin. They came together soon after, Zelda whispering into his ear of her love for him. He merely said her name, once, twice, as if he could not believe the identity of the woman beneath him.</p><p>She left him to clean up quickly, and when she returned she nearly stumbled at the way his eyes were boring into her own, the devotion she saw there. She climbed into bed and wrapped herself around him, waiting anxiously to ensure he returned her affections in kind and circled his arms around her.</p><p>He did. She sighed. The relief was its own kind of high.</p><p>“You asked me to promise not to pull away,” he said, just as her eyes were beginning to close, “and I promise I won’t. I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.” She felt him laugh beneath her cheek. She smiled, pressed a kiss to his chest, snuggled in deeper.</p><p>“But, Zelda, we’re going to do something about the nightmares. I can abide this only if I know we’re trying to fix it.”</p><p>Sleep beckoned, but she picked her head up to look him in the eye. “Whatever it takes, my love.” She kissed him before settling back against him. And when she woke a few hours later, fresh from Calamity’s torture, he was still there, holding her close.</p>
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